Storm-anxious Pocono residents make best of long wait at store

They were trying to make the best of a bad situation on Saturday afternoon. People were hanging out in the garden section of Lowe's in Bartonsville, waiting for a new shipment of portable electric generators to arrive.

They were trying to make the best of a bad situation on Saturday afternoon.

People were hanging out in the garden section of Lowe's in Bartonsville, waiting for a new shipment of portable electric generators to arrive. Lowe's had sold out of electric generators early in the morning, as anticipation and fear surrounding Hurricane Sandy increased.

When the store ran out of generators around 10 a.m., employees told customers a new shipment was on the way. But about five hours later, they were still there waiting because the delivery truck had broken down in Hazleton.

Although the truck's situation threw into question whether anyone would go home with a generator, these folks weren't budging. And since they were all stuck in the same place, they tried to a have a decent time of it.

"After being here for so long, I'm now officially calling this 'Occupy Lowe's,'" said Claus, a resident of Saylorsburg and a member of this dogged, generator-desiring crew.

Claus, who didn't want to give his last name, had been christened "mayor" of the crew after he tried to convince another member of the group, not to leave the store empty handed. The guy still left anyway.

As time wore on, the group of 30 people shrank to a core group of about 12. They made themselves comfortable, grabbed lawn chairs and assigned each other numbers, so there would be no confusion about who was further in line.

"I've got no choice but to wait for a generator. I want my tropical fish to be OK," said Birdie Dorman, of Teaneck, N.J.

Dorman came here because a Home Depot in New Jersey told her all of their stores in the Garden State were momentarily out of backup generators.

Jan Emes, a Stroudsburg resident, said she thought by coming to the Bartonsville Lowe's at 11 a.m. Saturday — long before Hurricane Sandy is expected to make landfall — she'd be able to buy a generator.

"I wanted to avoid that mad dash," said Emes, as she sat in a lawn chair with a book, "The Mephisto Club," in her lap.

Albina Herron of Stroudsburg was trying to pass the time by knitting a hat. Her husband was supposed to buy a generator after the last big storm hit the Poconos, but he never got around to it, she said.

Most said they needed the generators so they can power their sump pumps and prevent basement flooding. They also don't want food in their fridges to go bad.

Understandably, generators have begun to sell like hotcakes any time a major storm is predicted. Most of all the major hardware stores around the region said they were sold out of generators on Saturday. A manager from Ace Hardware e-mailed the Pocono Record to say Ace would receive a shipment of generators on Sunday.

But even though there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding as to who would and wouldn't get generators, the folks at Lowe's on Saturday tried to make the best of the situation. They laughed and talked about how desperate the hunt for generators had become.

"I heard that someone drove all the way from West Virginia to this Lowe's to get a generator," Herron said.

"No, that can't be true," said Emes.

"Yeah, it's true," Claus said. "They were in the parking lot."

"That's a little crazy. What about all those Lowe's between here and West Virginia?" Jan said with a chuckle. "It probably would have been better if they just went to Ohio."